Corking the Bottle

(Reprinted from my blog post July 28, 2018) We store pains in our brains and issues in our tissues. Sounds to me like a good excuse to drink, huh? At least it was a good excuse for me. If you think too much, you may drink too much. Go ahead, self-medicate, that evil little voice inside me used to say. Did it work? You know the answer already. If it did, my brain right now would be fogging, not blogging. My corpuscles would be clogging. I'm going to stop this rhyme, just in time. (It sounds pretty stupid, and I don't want you to miss the point.) That is that alcohol is poison, bad medicine, addictive, and dangerous. To remove pain from your brain and issues from your tissues, try God. Pray daily. Take your higher power on vacation with you. It will fit in a carry-on. Your gray matter matters.

(Reprinted from my blog post July 13, 2018) I'm not happy all the time. No one is. When I get a flat tire, am allegedly nagged by my wife, stub my toe, get bitten by my cat, or watch the Pirates lose, I feel unhappy. Yet I feel joy pretty much all the time, even while those bad things are happening. I am about 2/3 finished reading  Choose Joy Because Happiness Isn't Enough , by Kay Warren. ( http://kaywarren.com/choosejoy/ ) She doles out an overdose of scripture, in my opinion, and claims the Bible to be the unquestionable 100% word of God. That's fine for her, but I have my own set of beliefs. And you have your own, too. Nevertheless, she gets it right, in my view, much of the time throughout her book. She defines joy as "the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be all right, and the determined choice to praise God in all things." Happiness, she claims, is a temp

(First published July 3, 2018) I was about to lose my job in 2004. My friend, confidant, and sister-in-law (rolled into one) must have sensed a high-pressure system and impending rainstorm. She told me I should go sit on a beach until I find the real Dan again. Of course I didn't take her advice."We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not ( Big Book , page 58)." At that point, I hadn't hit bottom yet and so was still frantically digging my hole. Today, I find the old Dan is no more. It turns out the hole he was digging was his own grave. But from all the depression, DUIs, fender benders, and blackouts arose a new Dan. I seriously have never felt like this my entire life. I feel no stress. I am empowered. I am in control of my life. I discovered true joy. I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to "the care of God as we understood him." Further, I made a moral inventory of myself and "was entirely ready to have God

TAYMFA (Two Acronyms You Might Find Amusing) EGO (Edging God Out) AA (Attitude Adjustment) And here's a riddle: What does a dermatologist and God have in common? They both remove defects if I let them.

This comes from a group page, Faces and Voices of Recovery. I have written in this blog often about the issues that led to my demise. Alcoholism is a symptom of something going wrong in our lives. The cure needs to eliminate the demons that lead us to self-medicate. Said another way: Tim Harrington  shared a  link . Treatment of Addiction ...Of course, the needs of someone addicted are the same as what all humans need: self-acceptance, relief of pain, peace of mind, social connection, and a sense of power and place. Treatment, thus, should explore how, in a person’s life, these needs were not fulfilled; why that person developed the belief that only through particular substances or behaviors would they be met: or what, in other words, created the susceptibility....

I saw this in yesterday's newspaper. Actually, yesterday's online transmission of news. See if this is something you can identify with. DEAR ANNIE Annie Lane Worker lives for drinking at pub Dear Annie:  I work in a big city. After work, I enjoy going to the local bar. I’ve been doing this for three years, and everything was fine — with occasional problems — until the past few months. Now it is what I seem to be living for. My work is not very challenging, but I consider myself lucky to have this job. Many people would give anything to have it. At five o’clock, I leave the building and head straight for the bar. When I started doing this, I could take it or leave it, but gradually going to this pub has become an obsession. I can’t wait to get there and to order that first drink. It’s as if I perform busy work all day long, and I can only enjoy life and really be myself at the bar. In the past few months, I have noticed that I think about going to get drin

When one stops drinking, there are two kinds of recovery. Physical recovery takes 90 days. Mental recovery takes 90 years.

I'm home from our annual family camping vacation, which includes my family and my in-laws. Only 11 attended this year. It was the first such get-together since my father-in-law died. My mother-in-law didn't go. I'm glad my 87-year-old mother was able to go. She even rode a camel at a wildlife park. As for me, I was there 100% sober. I can't say that for every year. One time I was sick for several days as I detoxed. One year I went just a week after a 28-day out-patient stay. I even went to  an AA meeting someplace in Ohio that year. But I stayed sober only about three months after that. Other years I thought often about how soon I would be home...alone...with vodka. I couldn't wait for the outing to end. It was so nice this year to be sober and without a thought of my next drink. Each morning during my fitness walk I thanked God for the nature around me, for taking over my life as I had asked him to do, and for my family at camp and places far away. I'm

I wanted to tell you I leave Tuesday for our annual extended family campout. I will be back Sunday. So if you check this blog and it hasn't been updated, please come back. I will start blogging again on July 22. Bye.

I have a Fitbit watch. It counts the number of steps I take, measures my heart rate, keeps time when I exercise, and tells me how to relax for two minutes at a time. I can go on line to my Fitbit app and see how many calories I have burned today. Let's see.... As of 3:04 p.m., I have taken 4,964 steps, walked 2.4 miles, and consumed 1,587 calories. I think Fitbit also can tell me how many people I made mad, but I haven't figured that one out yet. Every night at midnight, everything goes back to zero and I start all over again. Abstaining from alcohol works the same way. Okay, so I didn't drink today. At midnight I have to start over. It's great now at 3:08 that I haven't taken a drink. Wise people take life one day at a time. Sometimes one minute at a time. Now that I have gone one year, two months, and 14 days without drinking, I feel like each minute and each day are easier. But I can't let down. I can't get over-confident. Today: yeah, okay. But a

(Reprinted from July 2, 2018) I used to be a marathon runner. If you could see me you would be laughing now. My knees creak, my belly sags, and I moan going down stairs. But it's true. In the springtime of my life, I ran 29 marathons, a 50 miler, and lots of races from 5-18 miles. And thousands of miles to remain fit. But after knee surgery and a prolonged bout of laziness, I am reduced to walk/jog about 30-40 minutes a day. Once healthy and fit, I now find I am tired after mowing the lawn or vacuuming the house or flicking through channels with the remote. Lesson: To retain one's physical fitness requires regular effort, through rain or snow or sleet or (recently) heat. Likewise, I once let go of my spiritual fitness. I stopped praying, stopped caring, and started drinking to excess. I was a lost cause. Thankfully, God didn't let me stay lost among the tall weeds in the rough. He lifted me onto the fairway, drove me to the green, and led me to the hole. Lesson: To re

My daughter has this hanging in her living room: I like it! Sometimes it seems as though God is silent, like He has left us on our own. That never happens. This is from The Purpose Driven Life , by Rick Warren ( https://pastorrick.com/ ): "When God seems distant, you may feel that he is angry with you.... It is a test of faith -- one we all must face: Will you continue to love, trust, obey, and worship God, even when you have no sense of his presence or visible evidence of his work in your life? ... God is always present, even when you are unaware of him...." In my drinking days, there were times I didn't feel like God was anywhere around me. Same with my wife. She was someplace else. I figured I could buy booze and have just a little drink, and neither God nor my wife would ever find out. The reality was that I was partly right -- my wife was with me, and both my wife and God found out I was sneaking drinks again. Then one of them dumped my bottle down th

"Just as a sculptor will use different tools to achieve desired effects in creating a work of art, in Alcoholics Anonymous the Twelve Steps are used to bring about results in my own life.... My life is now in the Hands of my Higher Power, a master craftsman who is shaping each part of my life into a unique work of art." That's an excerpt from A.A.'s Daily Reflections for July 1. After it was read at an A.A. meeting I attended that day, Jim added to the sculpting metafore. He said sculpting is done either by adding or taking away. By starting with nothing, an artist can take clay and form it to take the shape he wants. Or a sculptor can start with a rock or a slab of metal or even ice and take away from it until he creates the form he wants it to have. Jim's point was that God does sculpt us. He can do so by adding joy to our lives and helping us find our true form. God also sculpts us by taking away our drinking and our flaws. "He makes me a new person.

I found this on Faces and Voices of Recovery discussion group: T Rose Rcvry June 24 at 5:18 PM  ·  Sometimes we are .. our own worst critic, the voice of self doubt and fear can paralyze us if we allow it  😣 🤕 😲 🙃 😭 ... Leading us to in many cases to make bad decisions, avoid the battle or never take a step forward  ➡ ... You can overcome all of these things, no it won't always be easy and taking those first few steps may feel more like crawling... Though if you are making progress in your recovery journey and life. The happiness and serenity u have always craved will be overwhelming, amazing and beautiful. Take your life back, relearn who you are and find that person who u miss... Yourself! Maybe it'll be the 1st time meeting. You!. .... It will be worth it.  ❣️ You are worth it,  💞 😃 you are worth the recovery success u have always desired  💜 🌷 💫 🦋 🌹

(Reprinted from July 1, 2018) Quite by accident, I stumbled upon (a sober stumble, not one of my inebriated falls) a website that dishes out some interesting perspectives on the success of A.A. and the so-called Big Book that steers that organization: "Today, A.A. is serving more than 2 million recovering alcoholics in more than 180 countries. Moreover, the 12 Step program that Bill W. laid out in the Big Book has helped millions of people with a host of other addictions. 'These include Narcotics Anonymous, the more specific Marijuana Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Workaholics Anonymous, and Sexaholics Anonymous,' reports the BBC. 'Clutterers Anonymous deals with those with hoarding problems. Underearners Anonymous offers support for those suffering an inability to provide for one's needs.' Support for loved ones of those going through addiction is on offer at Families Anonymous [more common around here is Al-Anon]. In 2011, the Big Book was named one of

What is your passion? Me, I have several: family, Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, Louisville women's basketball. And my latest passion: helping alcoholics find God and recover. That latter passion is what happened to me. I have no desire whatsoever to drink. God is guiding my life, not me anymore. Let me return to The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren: "As you grow closer to him, he will give you a passion for something he cares about deeply so you can be a spokesman for him in the world. It may be a passion about a problem, a purpose, a principle, or a group of people . Whatever it is, you will feel compelled to speak up about it and do what you can to make a difference." (Emphasis added) I figure God isn't cheering for those teams I said I am passionate about. But He certainly cares about the last one: "helping alcoholics find God and recover." That's why I started this blog and part of the reason I attend A.A. meetings several times a week. I t